Why do I refer to your statement as a red
herring? Because you are ignoring the fact that supporting
OOXML doesn't just allow users to have some interaction with
the propriatairy MS format it also validates it as being
relevant. And you are doing not only your users but the rest
of the world a disservice with that.
...You assume that since its an MS standard, it will be
successful, and by supporting their work you are actually
helping to make that a reality.

Actually, the millions of users with documents in
that
format validate that it is relevant. The market demand for
inter-operability with the format validates it as relevant.
AbiWord or some other program supporting the format only
confirms that *other people* have deemed it relevant. That's
how markets work. These "other people" are your potential users.

If one grudgingly supports OOXML *the
format*,
in the
interests of allowing users to inter-operate with
Microsoft-using colleagues, one need not approve of MS'
actions during the "standardization" process or their (you
say) lousy "standard". We don't approve of their actions. At
all. We do support Jody Goldberg's attempts to extract
better documentation from Microsoft. It makes life that much
more difficult for them, while making our implementation
that much easier.

Because we do this, doesn't mean that we don't
whole-heartedly support ODF. In your attempt to show a "red
herring", you set up a false dichotomy. (In fact, AbiWord is
shipping on the OLPC XO machines with ODF as the default
file format, and we're pleased as punch about that.)

Differing, redundant file formats drive market
fragmentation
and promote vendor lock-in, and should thus be considered
evil, especially when they are proprietary formats. However,
sticking our heads in the sand and pretending
that Microsoft's OOXML won't get significant user uptake is
(IMO) an absurd position. The pile of OOXML documents in my
wife's inbox are proof enough that it already has. In this
case, OOXML's success is measured by how much the community
at large uses the file format, not how much you, as a
potential implementer and free software enthusiast, like
Microsoft,
their actions during the standardization process, or their
file format.

Disagree with the bad technical aspects of the OOXML
format.
Disagree with how Microsoft conducted themselves during the
ISO standardization process. Shout it from the rooftops, all
the while wholly supporting and promoting existing, open
standards, such as ODF. I think that we're in total
agreement on these positions.

But not (grudgingly) supporting the OOXML format
hurts your
potential users and your quest for openness more than it
hurts Microsoft, at least at this point in time. Supporting
OOXML allows your products to compete with Microsoft on ease
of use, or preferred platform, or etc. It allows your
would-be users to transition off of proprietary Microsoft
products, platforms and "standards" and onto free-er
products, platforms and
standards. Like KOffice, GNU/Linux and ODF.

In your role as core KOffice developer, if you truly
believed your own arguments, you'd remove the binary Excel,
Word,
Visio, and PowerPoint filters from KOffice. But I imagine
that would be both politically impracticable and
counter-productive to
your cause.

We support our users and openness. If that means being
able to inter-operate with proprietary formats, that's a
choice that I'm comfortable making. But in no way should it
be construed as our supporting
Microsoft so much as supporting our users. To that end, I
sincerely believe that being able
to (at minimum) read OOXML files promotes those goals and is
wholly consistent
with software and personal freedom.

Do you stay up at night attacking interesting algorithmic
and architectural problems? Do deep NLP, semantic search,
and distributed systems get you all hot & sweaty?

If you've answered "yes" to any of these questions and live
in the greater Boston area, you should drop me a line.

ZoomInfo is a great
place to work. I've been there for 14 months, and I've had a
heck of a time. The corporate culture is energetic,
youthful, and above all else, smart. It's still got a
start-up feel to it,
even though the company's consistently been in the black for
the past 8 years. And we're growing. Fast. But not
recklessly so. There's a method to our madness, and it's
paying great dividends.

Check out our careers
page and our recruiter's blog
for more info. We love hiring F/OSS people and we
unofficially have about 20 open engineering positions for
web, backend, and data architects. If you're unemployed,
underemployed, or just looking for a career change, you
should definitely give
us a look.

Most of the board's processes and meetings happen behind
closed doors. From the meeting minutes (and be honest here,
how many people actually read those?), who can tell if
member X is
being derelict in his duties or being an obstructionist?
Especially since the board members have an unofficial
policy of not speaking negatively of past and present
members in public.

Murray has been on several GNOME Foundation boards. He's
seen how the process works and has a somewhat unique
insider's view of things. I'm glad that he's broken the wall
of silence.

How much you choose to believe Murray is, of course, your
decision to make. However, attempts to silence
him by
telling him to voice his opinion solely through his
anonymous vote
is disingenuous and does a disservice to us, the
Foundation's members, who'd like to make better-informed
decisions.

Attempts to silence Murray's negative comments while
implicitly condoning his and others' public endorsements
reeks of hypocrisy. Disagree with Murray's language if you'd
like to. Disagree with his diagnosis
if you'd like to. But Murray's content (and any response
from Jeff) is the "chocolate" that all
of us should be considering when we vote for the next board.
Jeff has the capacity to respond to Murray's critique if
he'd like to. Let's let them speak.

Please start treating Eric
Gagne as a sunk cost.
Just because you paid $6,000,000 for his contract this
season doesn't mean that you have to play him unless, say, a
meteorite hits your bullpen. Even then, consider letting Manny
pitch a few innings instead. It'll be better for all of us.

Gagne's proven on enough
occasions this season (including 2 consecutive nights in the
playoffs!) that he's not worth it. Boston area pharmacies
don't have enough antacid to go around.

Alternately,
"America" is a popular nickname for the only country with
"America" in its name :)

After all, lots of countries have political subdivisions
called "states". A bunch even advertise the fact that they're
made up of states in their official name. Some even go so
far as to throw the word "united" in there. So in some
bizarro-universe, the
abbreviation "U.S." or colloquialism "the States" could
refer equally well, to say, the United
Mexican States as it does to the United States of America.

But Canadians would never refer to their other southern,
NAFTA-loving neighbor
as "The States" or the "U.S.". Every sane person just calls it
"Mexico". Of course, the continents aren't named North and
South Mexico. But maybe if we all had goatees... All the
other cool countries get to remove "Federated States of",
"Grand Duchy of", "Republic of", etc. from their common
names. Why can't the USA?

3 weeks I spent stripping, cleaning, and sanding through 6
layers of paint, lacquer, and stain on my poor deck. Each
day, an hour
before work and an hour after work. 5 hours each day on the
weekends. I finally finished it yesterday, and it looked
beautiful.

This morning, I looked at the forecast. 30C and partly
cloudy. Perfect weather to stain the deck. GWeather has
no mention of rain whatsoever for the next 3 days. And it
hasn't rained for 3
days. This is my window of opportunity. My summer project
would finally be complete.

No sooner than I finish the last brush stroke on the stairs,
the heavens open up. One gray cloud that I'd been shooing
away all afternoon decided to plant itself over my house. My
deck now has 1cm of water on it.
It's probably ruined. I'll need to strip, clean, and sand
through this layer of stain so that I can re-apply it. What
else can I do but laugh :)

One of my SoC students is working on a grammar-checking
plugin for AbiWord. Last week, he started to use ICU's sentence
breaker instead of an ad-hoc one that we'd developed inside
of AbiWord. The major difference is in how abbreviations
(like "Mr." and "Mrs.") are handled. The results aren't
perfect, but he's making headway.

This week, a federal appeals panel struck
a blow against the FCC's ability to censor "obscene"
content on television and radio. The FCC (though they may be
exaggerating their case) fears that the opinion "could gut
the ability of the commission to regulate any speech on
television or radio".

I've never understood the FCC's prerogative when it came to
regulating content for moral reasons. Nor have I understood
(or agreed with) the Court's first-amendment jurisprudence
when it comes to "obscenity" and "community standards".

The airwaves belong to the public. The first amendment
grants us freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Case
closed, as far as I'm concerned.
Community standards and obscenity are noticeably absent from
the Constitution -
probably invented from the ether by some of those "activist
judges" that today's Republicans get so up-in-arms about.

The government has already mandated that all televisions
contain a V-Chip and
that broadcasters rate their content according to the amount
of "language", violence, sexuality, and etc. that it contains.

I am in favor of warning labels. For example, I'm quite happy
that products list their ingredients and nutritional value.
Whether these labels are government-mandated or come about
via the
"invisible hand of the market", they help make me a
more informed consumer.

I am generally in favor of personal choice. True choice can
only come
about when you have informed choosers.

So, with these ratings (assuming that they are roughly
accurate) and V-Chip-like technology, we have the ability to
self-censor anything that we wouldn't want to watch (or more
often, wouldn't want our progeny to watch).

So fsck community standards, and fsck the FCC. Get out of
the business of fining Howard Stern and Opie and Anothony
for the garbage they say on the airwaves. If FOX wants to
become a
hardcore pr0n channel, fine. Let them. So long as these
broadcasters are required to accurately rate their content
and we, their potential audience, have the ability to filter
out undesirable content, I don't see the harm. (Though I
also don't see the harm of a kid accidentally seeing a
breast on TV our hearing a "naughty" word. But that's just me.)

The FCC should have never been permitted to police
"community standards" in the first place. Maybe it was
"necessary" for a while before we had V-Chip technology. But
the technology has been mandated for 7 years now, and in
light of this, the
FCC's policing is wholly unwarranted.

The agency still
does some useful things, like certifying that electronic
devices don't interfere with one another. Let them do that,
and get out of our radios and television sets. The
government and my community have no right to
legislate what I choose to see and hear, nor do they have
the right to legislate what these broadcasters might wish to
say (absent, perhaps, making knowingly factually inaccurate
claims in order to deceive the public).

I'm headed back to the Tel Aviv area again this weekend. If
any of my Israeli friends would like to meet up sometime
between June 2 and June 7, email domlachowicz AT gmail DOT com.

This comes on the heels of a thoroughly enjoyable trip to
Montreal this past weekend. I spent most of last Saturday
lying on sunny, green Mont Royal with Ruth. On Sunday, we
went to a chocolate festival in nearby Bromont. I'll have to
post pictures when I get a few spare moments to myself :)

Late last year, my favorite restaurant in Boston was forced
to close when its liquor license wasn't renewed. At the
time, I was furious. What had happened is that "neighbors"
of the restaurant (read: white yuppies that live 7+ blocks
away) objected to the "undesirable element and noise" that
the restaurant attracted in their "up-and-coming" Jamaica
Plain neighborhood. Since this was an inexpensive Ethiopian
restaurant, I'm going to assume that "undesirable element"
was code for "relatively poor black clientèle." I
petitioned the Boston City Council, pointing out all sorts
of interesting data like the fact that no one lived near the
restaurant (using photos of the parks that surround it...),
that the clientèle was largely blue-collar blokes
trying to
make ends meet (usually as taxi drivers) and weren't causing
anyone any trouble. But to no avail. The burgeoning
property owners had won.
Fasika closed, neighborhood property values rose slightly,
and I begrudgingly moved on with life. I
bought a house, moved further away from JP, and assumed that
was that.

Until today, that is. Pat Lam just told me the
greatest news
ever. Fasika has reopened. In Somerville. Five blocks from
where I now live. I'm so happy that I could cry! This white
yuppie property owner proudly welcomes Fasika to his
up-and-coming Somerville neighborhood. And I'll happily
watch my property value (and most likely, weight) go up
because of it.